For a ‘Social’ Theory of Literature and Paraliterature: Some Programmatic Reflections

Abstract

I would impenitently maintain the strong scepticism toward ‘sociology of literature’ formulated in several previous articles — one of which was commenting on a bibliographic survey of about 70 books of sociology of ‘high’ literature (see Suvin, 1980; Angenot and Suvin, 1981). This is based both on the state of the art (I do not believe we have today more than a few cornerstones for a properly critical sociology or anthropology — cf. Shaw) and on the refusal of politico-philosophical presuppositions which split culture into individual vs. collective, also low vs. high. If literature is to be approached as either collective or individual, and its system as either ‘popular lit.’ or ‘high lit’, we are on the horns of a dilemma. No doubt such a system has been brought about by the bourgeois market, but I refuse to accept it as a ‘natural’ basis for permanent judgements (though as a practising critic I may at times have to prefer being impaled on one rather than the other horn).